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Re: Employers add no net jobs in Aug.; rate unchanged

Goldenboy219;1059778152]To someone who has a poor understanding of the political economy, believing the 81-82 recession was the worst recession since the great depression is quite common.

It was great paying 17.5% for a home mortgage, seeing keys thrown at the banks because of those interest rates, 10.8% unemployment which impacted consumer spending

Incorrect again! The difference between the two is we are in a liquidity trap. Volker induced the early 80's recession as a means of quelling inflation expectations. They are completely different and stem from separate aspects of market failure.

Keep studying it and spouting intellectual rhetoric which makes you way too smart to understand something so simple like the four components of GDP and the impact of each on the economy. I don't expect people like you to understand human behavior because you never have dealt with it. You have apparentlly never hired anyone and obviously live in your intellectual elite bubble.

Look, i get it that you despise the Obama administration. The majority of your posts are venomous rants about "Obama this" and "Obama that". Until you understand the severity of our current situation, you will find great difficulty putting forth a credible argument.

I dispise the liberal rhetoric that never leads to positive economic results. Obama is a very nice man but incompetent. The majority of my posts confuse you by posting logic, common sense, and actual data. I would have thought someone with your superior intellect would understand the data better than you do. Whether I put together a credible argument to your satisfaction is irrelevant to me as I won't lose any sleep over it. Go to the Harvard Faculty lounge and solve the problems of the world outside of reality.

The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. "As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world," said Sanders. "This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else."

Among the investigation's key findings is that the Fed unilaterally provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from South Korea to Scotland, according to the GAO report. "No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president," Sanders said.

The non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress also determined that the Fed lacks a comprehensive system to deal with conflicts of interest, despite the serious potential for abuse. In fact, according to the report, the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans.

For example, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served on the New York Fed's board of directors at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed. Moreover, JP Morgan Chase served as one of the clearing banks for the Fed's emergency lending programs.

In another disturbing finding, the GAO said that on Sept. 19, 2008, William Dudley, who is now the New York Fed president, was granted a waiver to let him keep investments in AIG and General Electric at the same time AIG and GE were given bailout funds. One reason the Fed did not make Dudley sell his holdings, according to the audit, was that it might have created the appearance of a conflict of interest.

To Sanders, the conclusion is simple. "No one who works for a firm receiving direct financial assistance from the Fed should be allowed to sit on the Fed's board of directors or be employed by the Fed," he said.

The investigation also revealed that the Fed outsourced most of its emergency lending programs to private contractors, many of which also were recipients of extremely low-interest and then-secret loans.

The Fed outsourced virtually all of the operations of their emergency lending programs to private contractors like JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. The same firms also received trillions of dollars in Fed loans at near-zero interest rates. Altogether some two-thirds of the contracts that the Fed awarded to manage its emergency lending programs were no-bid contracts. Morgan Stanley was given the largest no-bid contract worth $108.4 million to help manage the Fed bailout of AIG.

A more detailed GAO investigation into potential conflicts of interest at the Fed is due on Oct. 18, but Sanders said one thing already is abundantly clear. "The Federal Reserve must be reformed to serve the needs of working families, not just CEOs on Wall Street."

Last edited by Michael H; 09-05-11 at 04:44 PM.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking. Patton

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. John Locke

Re: Employers add no net jobs in Aug.; rate unchanged

Originally Posted by Conservative

Why the HR 1461 didn't reach the President's desk was due to the Senate but again you continue to look backwards which ignores the results today.

I'm assuming you know that Republicans were in control of the Senate in 2005, so where's your outrage at them for not putting H.R. 1461 to a full Senate vote? When you're done answering that, answer why that same outrage is missing over S.190, a second bill that never made it to a full Senate vote thanks to Republicans in 2005.

Where's your outrage, Conservative? Why are you blaming Frank and Dodd for being against oversight in 2005 when we learn it was the party you supported which failed to get oversight to Bush's desk?

Originally Posted by Conservative

Fact is Democrats took control of the Congress in 2007 and did nothing to either revive the bill or put restrictions on Freddie and Fannie.

Fact is, by 2007, the damage was done. Democrats were still on the wrong side of the issue and got nothing done, but nothing could have prevented the meltdown by that point.

Originally Posted by Conservative

I have never seen you put blame at the feet of the Democrats

That's because you're lying again. Here's one post (there are others) where I did which you even responded to it. So yeah, you've seen me blame Democrats.

Originally Posted by Sheik Yerbuti

No, you don't see. If you could see, you would see the damage caused in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006 while Republicans controlled the Congress and did nothing to add oversight to the GSE's. By the time Democrats took over in 2007, the damage was already done; the Titanic was already sinking. They were on the wrong side too and also did nothing but how on Earth do you blame Democrats who were only in charge for 11 months when Bush's Great Recession began but not Republicans, who were in charge for 12 years prior to that? Including, and especially, the 4 years between 2003 and 2006 when the housing bubble was ballooning completely out of control.

Re: Employers add no net jobs in Aug.; rate unchanged

Originally Posted by Goldenboy219

The short term weakness of the dollar is more indicative of our current account imbalance. In terms of consumption, a weaker dollar should only impact exports....
Neither our trade imbalance nor our weak dollar policy are short term.

U.S. productive capacity of petro and natural gas is simply incapable of bringing the price down. Daily oil consumption (in the U.S.) as a function of time is on a downward slope where as the emerging world is continuing to demand more and more global supply.

I was addressinf our trade imbalance, not the price as you should have understood.

Do you believe that similar "beggar-thy-neighbor" tax policies will not arise from nations that have a heavy U.S. manufacturing presence?

Beggar thy neighbor? Hardly. America has to understand either we bolster our middle class with some type of artificial supports or allow their standard of living to compete with what the rest of the world pay people whose skills only allow them to be machine workers. What would you do with the great majority of Americans who have limited skills.

Targeting inflation at 4% instead of 2% will surely lead to an increase in inflation expectations. The question remains how do we recognize a specific target when the overnight Fed Funds rate trades below the target? Strictly speaking, what more can the monetary authorities do given that a great deal of their ammunition is used up?

My sense is that Bernanke will probably target the longer end of the maturity curve. Also if there is a QE3, it will be materially larger, thus pushing the inflation agenda.

Re: Employers add no net jobs in Aug.; rate unchanged

Sheik Yerbuti;1059778192]I'm assuming you know that Republicans were in control of the Senate in 2005, so where's your outrage at them for not putting H.R. 1461 to a full Senate vote? When you're done answering that, answer why that same outrage is missing over S.190, a second bill that never made it to a full Senate vote thanks to Republicans in 2005.

I am sure that looking backwards 6 years later and bypassing the Democrat Control of Congress from 2007-2011 has a point but not sure what it is

Where's your outrage, Conservative? Why are you blaming Frank and Dodd for being against oversight in 2005 when we learn it was the party you supported which failed to get oversight to Bush's desk?

Serves no point having outrage over that which we cannot control now as it is past history so where is your outrage over what we can control now? Obama is in office and like you keeps blaming Bush and the past but here we are 2 1/2 years later with Obamanomics and worse results than the average of the Bush years. Of course you judge Bush by the last half of 2008 but most will judge him by his full term. Anyone think that Obama at the end of his first term will have better results than he has right now? If so where is the economic plan to change those results?

Fact is, by 2007, the damage was done. Democrats were still on the wrong side of the issue and got nothing done, but nothing could have prevented the meltdown by that point.

4 years later and still no improvement.

That's because you're lying again. Here's one post (there are others) where I did which you even responded to it. So yeah, you've seen me blame Democrats.

[/QUOTE]

Of course posting actual results for Obama is a lie to the minions that still support him

Re: Employers add no net jobs in Aug.; rate unchanged

Originally Posted by Michael H

I don't understand the negativity towards the housing bubble ... it provided employment. What would the economy have been like without it? We would be in a recession. Where would the capital from exported GDP have been invested. It sucks but I look at the bubble as a respite from recession.

Welcome to DP, Michael.

Low interest rates and many other factors caused real estate prices to rise rapidly. People saw this and saw what the thought was equity, so the decided to used their home as a credit card. What really hurt the economy was mortgaged bases securities that were rated AAA by rating agencies like S&P. Predatory loans were the rule of the day.

Re: Employers add no net jobs in Aug.; rate unchanged

Originally Posted by pbrauer

Welcome to DP, Michael.

Low interest rates and many other factors caused real estate prices to rise rapidly. People saw this and saw what the thought was equity, so the decided to used their home as a credit card. What really hurt the economy was mortgaged bases securities that were rated AAA by rating agencies like S&P. Predatory loans were the rule of the day.